RINOs Pitch Carbon Tax Plan to Trump Admin

Top Republicans Propose Carbon Tax Plan To Stop Climate Change … There’s a new climate change prevention plan in town, and unbelievably, it’s coming from some rather senior Republicans, the de facto party of science denial. Two former Secretaries of State – James Baker III and George Shultz – along with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr., met with Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council this week in Washington D.C. -IFL Science

These are Republicans that may now be known as RINOs. They propose a carbon tax, which they called a “conservative climate solution” and claim it is somehow a free-market approach.

A transcript from the Republicans delivered to IFLScience, said it was an alternative to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) caps and focus on renewable energy.

A “gradually rising carbon tax,” would do away with government suggestions on what people needed to adopt. Instead, “100 percent of the proceeds would be given back to the American people in the form of dividends.”

The trio reportedly added that, “America could meet the commitments that it made in Paris without any other policies. That is how effective the power of a marketplace solution can be. 223 million Americans stand to benefit financially from solving climate change.”

The Atlantic has a longish article on this program. In the Atlantic article we learn that while this may be an effective tax, it possibly wouldn’t be the only way of combating climate change. In other words, after the tax, we could, dismayingly, get another tax, or some other sort of economic disincentive. It certainly needn’t be the only one.

The Heritage Action for America think tank has already criticized the proposal, saying it runs counter to what President Trump is trying to do with the economy.

“There is no room in the Republican Party for a carbon tax,” said Michael A. Needham, the organization’s CEO. “Replacing Obama’s destructive regulatory regime with a destructive taxation regime will not make American companies more competitive or bring jobs back to abandoned communities. Beyond the policy implications, the Climate Leadership Council’s carbon tax proposal is just the latest example of policy solutions crafted by and made for cultural elites.”

This plan is being pitched as an incentive for creating jobs in the area of renewable energy. But it will obviously cost jobs as well. In fact, they may be pitching it as a job’s maker because there is no other way to justify it. Those who don’t believe in global warming point to a number of reasons why it may not exist.